The Howard League for Penal Reform

We have lost two eminent supporters

We have lost two eminent supporters recently.  Lord Lyell and Lord McIntosh both died last week.

Nicholas Lyell had been the MP for Bedford, John Howard’s home town.  As a barrister, a QC and an MP he was knowledgeable about our issues and generally supportive of many of our concerns.  I remember him speaking at one of our fringe meetings at Conservative party conference in Bournemouth when he was Attorney General, challenging the prejudices and misinformation of some of the audience with eloquent and patrician elegance.

Andrew McIntosh, as a spokesman on home affairs and supporter of investing power in local areas because of his commitment to London, spoke at several of our conferences and events.  Tony Travers in his obituary in the Guardian said that Andrew was a “left leaning north London intellectual, embodying decency and public service” – absolutely spot on.

Two people I liked and respected.  Sorry to lose them.

September 1, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

28 days

Professor Ken Pease astutely points out in a report published today for a right wing think tank that offenders are prevented from committing crimes against the general public while in prison (they can of course beat, scald, rape and attack staff and other inmates but let’s leave that aside.) But he suggests that keeping prisoners inside for 28 days extra would prevent thousands offences being committed.

Delaying reoffending by one month does not prevent these crimes from being committed, it merely delays the inevitable. Reoffending rates for anyone sentenced to imprisonment for less than a couple of years is pretty consistent, so another few weeks or months inside is a significant cost to the taxpayer but delivers no additional protection.

Nor, and most importantly does it help victims as by simply extending the period of incarceration. The Howard League’s awards to the most successful community programmes across the country show that apology to an individual victim and making amends for the harm done is both popular with victims and helps to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.

It doesn’t make much difference to a community knowing that the local heroin addicted burglar is coming out in five months instead of four. It does not address offending behaviour, nor does it encourage people to live a law-abiding life.

The previous government introduced IPPs- indeterminate sentences for public protection. This is an indeterminate sentence, so that someone sent to prison on an IPP does not have the automatic right to be released. They are held, indefinitely, until the parole board decides that they are no longer a risk to the public. There are currently some 7,000 men (and a few women) held in prison years beyond their tariff and at extortionate cost to the taxpayer. This would appear to be the kind of preventative detention being advocated by Professor Pease. The problem is that as more and more people are sentenced to this sentence without end, only a handful have been released. This is clogging up the prisons with people who have no hope and nothing to do all day.

An extra month in prison costs the taxpayer just over £3k and for the same money we could have an additional nurse or police officer.

And still without access to rehabilitation, education or purposeful activity. Just lying on a prison bunk. Additional prisoners would put an intolerable strain on already grossly overcrowded local prisons that are already struggling just to keep people safe.

We have seen the prison population rise exponentially over the past 15 years. More people are going to prison for longer sentences and yet this hasn’t solved our crime problems. Crime can be reduced by dealing with prolific and problematic offenders, but adding a few weeks to a short sentence is not the answer.

This is Micky Mouse politics. It is irresponsible, flimsy and does not apply to the real word or real people.

August 28, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Government policy, Headline grabbing, Overcrowding, Prisons, Sentencing, Uncategorized, Victims  One Comment

Ofsted report on child jails and secure units

Ofsted has issued a report today on the resettlement needs of children who are held in privately run child jails and local authority units. This once again illustrates how supine and ill-equipped Ofsted is to protect children in penal custody. 

The inspectors are meant to look at the welfare, protection and well being of children sent into custody. The press release states, baldly, that children generally receive good emotional care whilst in custody and that the problem is that they are held too far away from home which impedes resettlement. Firstly, it is an oxymoron that children in custody receive good emotional care. Children are taken from court, sometimes in those sweatboxes you see transporting prisoners. They are deposited in what amounts to a jail many miles from home. Ofsted is correct in drawing attention to the poor links with family, but because they are still wrapped in the target culture, sheer distance is not the major issue. What matters more is the quality of contact with family and accessibility. 

The youth justice board is being ingenuous when it replies that the reduction in the numbers of children going in to custody is the reason that local authority secure accommodation was cut – it was not numbers, it was costs. Local authority units are expensive, but then anyone dealing with children knows that they are always expensive. If you care for children cheaply, you do it badly. Prisons are cheaper than local authority units and that proves my point. The YJB withdrew contracts with local authority units and they closed. The Howard League took a judicial review on behalf of one of our child clients who had to be moved out of a unit but we lost the case. So, there is no secure accommodation for children in London. Any young child from the south east or London sentenced or remanded by the courts has to be detained miles away from home.

The issue at the heart of this is that young children are still being sent into penal custody far too readily. There are 114 children aged 11 to 14 in penal custody. The Howard League lawyers are currently representing two very young children and taking their cases to appeal because they were given indeterminate sentences (basically a life sentence) for offences that only a few years ago would not have generated a custodial sentence.

We are also representing children who have been repeatedly physically restrained in the private child jails – is that the sort of emotional care Ofsted supports?

Local authority units have had a good track record of success and if, in truly exceptional circumstances, a child requires custody, then these are the places that should be used. I have seen skilled, well trained and compassionate staff in local authority units; sadly, in the ones that have been closed down.

So, Ofsted, look more carefully at the quality of care provided. The report is called “admission and discharge from secure accommodation” but does not look critically at the issue of admission. The answer is not to increase capacity and built more jails for children, the answer is to stem the flow of children being admitted, so they don’t suffer the emotional deprivation of incarceration.

August 12, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Children and young people  2 Comments

Who are the villains and some other questions

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, yesterday waded into an issue that up until now has found relative political consensus – the fact that England and Wales require fewer people in prison.

Kenneth Clarke’s recent statement that short sentences were ineffective was largely endorsed by the Labour Party leadership candidates at a recent Howard League hustings and the ending of short sentences has been Liberal Democrat policy for years. However, in an interview with radio station LBC 97.3, that will be sure to stir up any fervent supporters of Michael Howard’s ‘prison works’ doctrine, Sir Paul Stephenson commented, “I’m rather fond of villains going to prison. I rather like it.â€

I normally try to avoid criticising the police as they keep us safe and do a good job of it, but Sir Paul’s remarks seem to come directly from the Batman school of crime fighting. In real life, however, catching the bad guy and sending him to prison is not the end of the story.

Here are just a few questions I would very much like him to answer:

Does it not bother him that the ‘villains’ he locked up yesterday will be out of jail and committing crime in just a few weeks? Why? Because short-term prison sentences actually don’t work, 61% of people in prison for less than 12 months reoffend within one year.

I would also like to know what he plans to do about the current budget deficit when it comes to criminal justice? Locking someone up for a year costs £41,000 and the National Audit Office estimates that reoffending by all recent ex-prisoners costs the taxpayer up to £13 billion a year. Community sentences, for certain crimes, save money and are more effective at solving crime long-term.

If the home office which is responsible for the majority of policing budgets and the MOJ that runs prisons are both facing swingeing cuts, and the cost of a police officer is about the same as the cost of a prisoner, which would Sir Paul prefer to see funded? The truth is if we prevent cyclic reoffending through a more advanced penal system, with the costs to victims and the economy that it entails, we can afford to fund more police officers to prevent more crime year on year.

Where does he draw his definition of ‘villains’? It is easy to just label someone who commits a crime a villain. However, someone who has spent their life working in criminal justice, as Sir Paul has and for which he deserves recognition, should know that in reality the situation is much more complex than a throw away Daily Mail headline.

Our Howard League legal team deals with children who commit crime, frequently these children have been abused or mistreated in their childhoods. Does Sir Paul consider these vulnerable children villains? What about the female victims of domestic abuse who are forced into crime to feed an abusive partner or a drug habit, or even out of sheer desperation?

This country’s dedicated police force do a good job protecting people in need. However, their work would be more effective if it were backed up by a penal system that strived for the most effective outcomes to stop crime long-term, thus protecting victims and communities. In times of budget constraint we have to look at where we spend money and assess its use. We at the Howard League believe a good starting point is to put money into what works, that is rarely prison.

August 11, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Prisons  One Comment

Deaths of prisoners

One of the dreadful things we have to do is monitor the deaths of prisoners. Each month I get a list of all the people who have died in prison, either from suicide or natural causes. Of course, there was the murder in Grendon at the weekend – the first death of any kind that I can remember in that prison.

Suicides of men, women and children in prisons and secure training centres have been a scandal for years. The Howard League was the first organisation to draw attention to the fact that young people were so miserable and desperate in prison that they were taking their own lives, when we made a huge fuss about the deaths of teenagers in Leeds prison more than 20 years ago. That led to the chief inspector of prisons conducting an inquiry and since then a great deal of work by prisons to save lives. And, it is paying off. This morning I looked at the latest list and whilst each death causes sadness, the number is continuing to drop. At the end of July 38 men had taken their own lives in prison this year. I say men, except one of them was a 19 year old lad who took his own life in Glen Parva prison. Three weeks ago a man sentenced to four weeks for theft hanged himself in Belmarsh on the induction wing, which meant he had only just entered the prison.

By the end of July, 63 people had died from natural causes. The worrying thing about these deaths is that they are often relatively young, reflecting years of a chaotic, drug and alcohol fuelled life with poor food, grotty and insecure housing and little love or family support. These are people dying of heart attacks, strokes and very often the cause of death is simply not stated. A life involving long periods of imprisonment or many short spells is an early death sentence.

August 6, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: suicide  One Comment

Policy developments

I haven’t got around to doing a blog for ages because we have been rushing around organising events. I am not going to comment on the hustings or conference on community sentences because there are detailed reports on the website, but there have been some interesting policy developments that are worthy of comment.

In the last few months three prisons for children have been “decommissioned” which is to be welcomed. Castington, Huntercombe and Brinsford will no longer be incarcerating children. This is because there were 2,070 young people under 18 held in custody in May 2010, down a fifth on last year and down a third from May 2008.

Whilst we welcome the reduced use of prisons for children, which are totally ill-equipped to deal with the complex and demanding needs of children, the reduction in the number of small local authority run secure units over the past few years is to be deplored. Too many children have died, experienced bullying and violence and have been set on the inexorable road to a life of crime through being incarcerated in prisons or privately run secure child jails for younger children.

The messages coming from the government indicating a significant shift away from prison as the automatic default position and away from the simplistically punitive rhetoric of the past few years is also to be welcomed. Of course prison is simply too expensive to continue expanding, but as a fundamental issue of the nature of our society it is wrong to base a justice system on revenge. I am pleased that the government is looking to expand the principle of healing the damage done by crime and of involving victims in a constructive way. Victims of crime should not be exploited in order to increase the pain inflicted on offenders, but supported so they feel safe and know that something effective and appropriate is going to happen.

There are indications that some radical reform of the indeterminate sentence will be included in the green paper. We now have more than 6,100 men serving indeterminate sentences for public protection and 6,000 lifers. Since the IPP was introduced two years ago only 133 people have been released. These people are clogging up prisons and prisons are unable to deliver the programmes that are the route to release.

We are pleased that the minister is for the first time in decades giving serious consideration to what happens inside prisons with long term prisoners. The idea of real work in prisons has been pioneered by the Howard League and we are working with the government and other partners on the details.

There are many issues still of concern but it looks like a trajectory of common sense.

July 29, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy, Headline grabbing, Uncategorized  No Comments

Real work in prison

We had a very interesting meeting with the new minister for prisons, Crispin Blunt, and subsequently sent him a briefing on work in prisons. Our conversation ranged broadly across penal policy and I am optimistic that Mr Blunt could turn out to be one of the most progressive and effective prisons minister I have worked with – and that is a lot of ministers.

He is particularly interested in prisoners working, spending their time usefully. This is a breath of fresh air, as while we are all concerned with using prison more sparingly and appropriately, there will always be people who are dangerous held in custody and whilst we are considering diversion we must also think what to do with the long termers.

Work for prisoners has been a theme of ours for fifteen years and sometimes it has felt like we were the only people talking about what people do all day in prison. Lots of our staff have contributed to the research, constructing a new vision and campaigning to get change. It is beginning to bear fruit as the idea of real work was adopted by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and included in the coalition government agreement. We are now talking about whether there needs to be legislative change or not – and we don’t think it is necessary. Only a change of attitude is required.

Be patient, I want to take you back a few years. Rehabilitation work: what are prison workshops for? was the first research on the issue and was published in 2000.

Over the next few years we raised capital to set up the most radical initative in a prison ever tried. Barbed, a graphic design business based on social enterprise principles, paying real wages with real employment for long term prisoners, was set up thanks to two intrepid and humane prison governors. Hundreds of people contributed to its inception, donating money, guidance, time and training for the raw recruits to the studio. Like any start up business it took time to gain customers but was starting to break even when the prison service effectively pulled the plug by refusing to recognise that our prisoners had employee rights. The inland revenue reimbursed tens of thousands of pounds of tax they had paid. We closed it down because without real employment it was not a business.

The evaluation Prison work and social enterprise: the story of Barbed is a damning indictment of prison service myopia and incompetence.

I am pleased now that ministers are looking again at the idea of real work. And I want to record my thanks to the many staff here who were persistent and professional in trying to get acceptance for an issue that for years no one else seemed to think was important. Persistence pays off. Prisoners currently spend decades shuffling about aimlessly and this needs to change. And it looks like it might.

Briefing on real work in prison

July 16, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Government policy, Prisons, Uncategorized  2 Comments

Deaths following release from prison

As director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, I sit on the ministerial board on preventing deaths in custody and recently raised the issue of the numbers of people who were dying whilst under the supervision of the probation service.

The Howard League for Penal Reform is one of the few organisations to have conducted research on the suicides of people while in custody and on release from custody.  In 2002 we published Suicide and self-harm prevention: following release from prison.  The report raised the issue of suicide after release from prison custody. 

We are currently conducting research into the number of people who die while under the supervision of probation.  We have found that around 500 people a year die while on probation.  While the majority of these people are serving community sentences, around 100 who die are on licence and/or had been in prison. 

Our research has revealed some worrying issues.  In one probation area, there have been 16 self-inflicted deaths since 2005.  Four of those who killed themselves had been in custody.  One died nine days after release and two died two months after release.

The duty of care to a prisoner does not come to an end on release.  We believe that the government has a responsibility and moral duty of care not only to those in detention but also those who have served a period in custody and been released.

While many of these deaths are currently investigated by the coroner for other reasons, the deaths of all people recently released from prison or on licence are not routinely referred to the coroner.  I recently responded to a consultation on reform of the coroner’s system and recommended that the deaths of all those who die within six months of release from prison, or while on licence, should be referred to the coroner and recorded.

I am very concerned about the excessive delays regarding inquests, with families having to wait years for a verdict.  There must be appropriate resources available to ensure these hearings are conducted expeditiously.  This would enable lessons to be learnt and help to minimise the distress caused to family members.

Finally, families of the deceased must have a right to legal aid so that they can be represented at the coroner’s court.

July 12, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Probation, suicide  No Comments

Preventing domestic violence

The terrible shootings in Northumberland resonated with conversations I have been involved in at a local level in London about preventing domestic violence and supporting victims. 

The concentration by politicians over the past decade on anti-social behaviour has forced the police to focus on trivia instead of preventing more serious crimes.  It is easy to have an arrest target that means collaring bored children for spray painting their names on the bus shelter.  It is not so easy to spend time listening to a woman who has been beaten by her partner, or, as in this case, assessing whether a man with a history of violence and a steroid addiction is serious when he makes threats against the mother of his child.

Remember that three young girls had made complaints to the police about being abused by Ian Huntley before Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were murdered.  Of course there was a need to respond to their deaths, but instead of retraining police staff to listen to, and believe, women and children when they have the courage to report an assault, a technical overhaul was introduced.  This was a technocratic response to a human problem. 

In my neighbourhood, as across the country, the police and local authority are working hard to support the victims of domestic violence, but this is still against a backdrop of political and local pressure to concentrate on street drinking and low level crime.  At a time of financial constraint, the police won’t be able to do everything but they must resist the pressure to take the easy options.

I don’t know if anything could have been done to prevent the shootings, but if staff in prisons and police officers had more time and professional training to assess the individuals they are responsible for, I am sure that the chances would have been improved.

July 6, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Police  2 Comments

Three good things

Yesterday was a good day. I went to hear Kenneth Clarke, the new secretary of state for justice, deliver his lecture to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in King’s College. It has been well covered in the media so I won’t go over it again, just to say that we welcome his rational view of the failures of the system and look forward to working with him. Andrew Neilson, our assistant director for public affairs, and I met with the prisons minister, Crispin Blunt, last week and he was saying much the same sort of thing. The amazing thing was that the minister kept telling us they are not like the last lot and that everyone should think differently. Such a breath of fresh air and clear thinking.

Of course the second good thing that happened yesterday was the vote in Scotland to curtail the use of very short prison sentences and raise the age of criminal responsibility from 8 to 12. This is going to add pressure to do the same here. 

The third interesting development was the vote in the French parliament to make psychological violence an offence as part of a broader range of measures aimed at improving the protection of victims of domestic violence. Whilst I am generally opposed to increasing the panoply of criminal offences, sometimes it can act as a symbol of our distaste and by that indicate to perpetrators that their behaviour is unacceptable. I will watch what happens with interest.

July 1, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Government policy, International  One Comment